Who are we? What do we want? Who do we want? Sometimes our biggest struggle is figuring out who we are and where we are going. Our longest journey is finding and then loving ourselves. Learning to accept where we came from, appreciating it and then moving on. These poems help weave a delicate wave of confusion, sexuality, acceptance, observation, and understanding. Identity is a crucial human experience, learning be who we are and then sharing it with others and the world.

Anjelica comes on to me like a man, all slim-hipped swagger, relentless, dangling that red, ‘57 T-Bird at me like dessert. Lemme take you for a ride, chica, she sez after acting class. I figure what’s the harm, but Ms Angel Food gets out of hand. I don’t count on her heart-shaped ass, or those brown nipples crammed in my mouth. I don’t count on the Dial-O Matic four-way, power leather seats, the telescoping steering wheel, or the frantic pleasure of her face between my thighs. I admit, I’ve always been driven to sin. But Anjelica’s far from blameless. She rides me hard, week after week, double clutches me into ecstasy, hipbone against hipbone, the dulcet, lingering groan of our gears, grinding. When I confess the affair to my boyfriend he jacks himself off in the galley kitchen, comes all over his unattainable fantasies. He says he doesn’t consider sex between women to be cheating, and begs me to set up a threesome. I tell him the T-Bird’s a two-seater, and watch his face fall. I could end it, but why? All I can say is, I want her for myself. All I can say is, I’m a die-hard romantic. Anyone I do, I do for love.

Originally appeared in The Pittsburgh Poetry Review, 2015. Reprinted with permission of the author.

I like to say we left at first light with Chairman Mao himself chasing us in a police car,my father fighting him off with firecrackers, even though Mao was already over a decadedead, & my mother says all my father did during the Cultural Revolution was teach math,which he was not qualified to teach, & swim & sunbathe around Piano Island, a place I never read aboutin my American textbooks, a place everybody in the family says they took me to, & that I loved.What is it, to remember nothing, of what one loved? To have forgotten the faces one first kissed?They ask if I remember them, the aunts, the uncles, & I say Yes it’s coming back, I say Of course,when it’s No not at all, because when I last saw them I was three, & the China of my first three yearsis largely make-believe, my vast invented country, my dream before I knew the word “dream,”my father’s martial arts films plus a teaspoon-taste of history. I like to say we left at first light,we had to, my parents had been unmasked as the famous kung fu crime-fighting couple of the Southern provinces,& the Hong Kong mafia was after us. I like to say we were helped by a handsome mysterious Northerner,who turned out himself to be a kung fu master. I don’t like to say, I don’t remember crying.No embracing in the airport, sobbing. I don’t remember feeling bad, leaving China.I like to say we left at first light, we snuck off on some secret adventure, while the others werestill sleeping, still blanketed, warm in their memories of us.What do I remember of crying? When my mother slapped me for being dirty, diseased, led astray by Western devils,a dirty, bad son, I cried, thirteen, already too old, too male for crying. When my father said Get out,never come back, I cried & ran, threw myself into night. Then returned, at first light, I don’t remember exactlywhy, or what exactly came next. One memory claims my mother rushed into the pink dawn brightto see what had happened, reaching toward me with her hands, & I wanted to say No. Don’t touch me.Another memory insists the front door had simply been left unlocked, & I slipped right through, found my room,my bed, which felt somehow smaller, & fell asleep, for hours, before my mother (anybody) seemed to notice.I’m not certain which is the correct version, but what stays with me is the leaving, the cry, the country splintering.It’s been another five years since my mother has seen her sisters, her own mother, who recently had a stroke, who has troublerecalling who, why. I feel awful, my mother says, not going back at once to see her. But too much is happening here.Here, she says, as though it’s the most difficult, least forgivable English word. What would my mother say, if she were the one writing? How would her voice sound? Which is really to ask, what ismy best guess, my invented, translated (Chinese-to-English, English-to-English) mother’s voice? She might say:We left at first light, we had to, the flight was early, in early spring. Go, my mother urged, what are you doing,waving at me, crying? Get on that plane before it leaves without you. It was spring & I could smell it, despite the sterile glass& metal of the airport—scent of my mother’s just-washed hair, of the just-born flowers of fields we passed on the car ride over,how I did not know those flowers were already memory, how I thought I could smell them, boarding the plane,the strange tunnel full of their aroma, their names I once knew, & my mother’s long black hair—so impossible now.Why did I never consider how different spring could smell,feel, elsewhere? First light, last scent, lostcountry. First & deepest severance that should have prepared me for all others.

From When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen, published by BOA Editions. Reprinted with permission of the author.

This bag of crunchy Cheetos is making me thirsty. Good thing I picked up a Fanta orange soda on the way home just in case. Walking back, I couldn't help noticing how most of the neighborhood has been replaced by strange towering steel and plate glass structures. A man was lying across the sidewalk in front of one of them and asked me for money. Greece is being bullied by Germany holding it to a double standard. When they had the tickertape parade for the US Women's Soccer Team this week and said "Canyon of Heroines" on the radio I started to laugh and realized it wasn't funny. The guy at an adjacent table in the coffee shop was looking at me smokily for an hour like he wanted to do something to me all over the counter, and I sat poised anticipating an advance that never arrived. I have trans woman friends who desperately need hope and jobs and love and safety and family. I wish I could be twenty places at once and have the power to fix everything but in a stealth way so I wouldn't be just grabbing the spotlight. True Detective is a TV show that a lot of people seem to enjoy. I trained myself to speak at a higher base pitch every morning until it became quasi-permanent because that is how I know I do not depend on the medical establishment or strangers' willingness to imagine charity. Much of the street is submerged underwater due to the storm. That other salesman can assist you—I'm helping this young lady right now, he said, placing his hand on the small of my back. The entire auditorium of people staring me down was hostile but knew they couldn't show it in public except for occasional frown lines darting from between their eyebrows. Please stand clear of the closing doors. I can't breathe in this dress. I can't seem to figure out where that smell is coming from in the apartment. Gender identity or expression will not protect you from being fired in most employment situations nor does being a transsexual. Split a capsule of medication into smaller doses by opening, dividing, and mixing it among separate containers of a mushy food like applesauce. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was signed this week amid much controversy. Did I just write all that? History is transmisogynistic but it won't be the more of it there is. The beautiful woman suggested I put my bare legs across her lap in the dark so I did and she gently ran her fingers along them. Wheat germ is where the problems all started. Later you asked if you could put your arm around me on the train but there was a scary guy shouting at everyone in the subway car and I didn't want to provoke him. People I love are at risk of being violently harmed or murdered every day, or they suffer from suicidal urges because of how the world fails to see us as people in a million sharp pointy little ways. Welcome to the military. The three-panel dressing room mirror had a Busby Berkeley effect which gave me a little thrill but I might have just imagined it. I wish I knew how to code things with boolean operators. I wish I knew how to read philosophy. The x-ray machine operator kept repeating "STOP BREATHING NOW DON'T BREATHE" each time he activated the machine. #CaitlynJenner

And if people don’t like it Que se vayan mucho a la Fábrica del interior A procesar Papeles, submit requests in writing for hearings Where you won’t show up

Because you don’t have to You go wherever the fuck you want You’re a good friend who comes when she’s needed, but Like water You move where you must and sometimes That’s not at her side

Finally your dreams don’t bite Finally, you tire of following directions Finally you break the rules to win But it didn’t matter It was a project, not a game, girl

A factory imagines your dreams Otra fábrica The lover materializes on a monitor The coming horizon of satellites and wood Pricey coffee and stupid speakers

There’s a plush pink monster sitting next to me at the table He means well, the macaroni elbow. Codo? Yes With no thumbs how much harm will he do can he do has he done He wants to bring art where none exists, philanthropic condos

His square head is soft and he’s smiling. I know he won’t eat me How many more times will he tangle my understanding How does it feel, you myopic spectacle Flouting your throbbing fluorescence

That monitor is a dying sparkler, its smoke means war, that I’m not gone But boy do I stink up the place Here, these colors I have ready Crushed eggshells confetti yellow, pink-purpled Que chiquigüite ni que ocho cuartos

Someone take out the trash Not me. You! Another factory-making insides Another rendering

I love you like you are the only one. Between smog-soaked trees, city of vaseline side-steps, you tower over. A clean-shaved head, as close to tough as you will ever be. Behind me, the Mexican flag: colossal. Beneath: full metros shake, pyramids settle. I am no virgin.

I’m the Aztec God of War. Relentless ash, the devil at my elbow. I consume lick-flames hotter than your vieja. But I hold your hand. Love you like you are the only one. The last piece of steak in chile verde. The last slice of chocolate flan. That’s how you left me, gordo.

2.I wrote you into a poembecause this is howI learned to host loveback home...now, I am left to grievetwice the weight of loss.

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

3.Our eyes traced each other, and gazed through the shades of fig trees, which we knew, a long time ago,used to mark borders, in lands where rivers dare to dry. You found me in a foreign city, then took meto my home, with your hesitations and fresh heartyou walked me to my past,then demanded without words to love the most shy wheat of your body/earth.

6.as you collect words to decorate my evening with stories from your home, I ache a loss I never met; you stretch a bridge between me and your village, I never met: we grew okra on the last thread of land hidden from the occupier’s hand, we ate from a round silver moon placed at the center of our humble universe; reached the moon, each with generous hands; we sat on the floor, to glorify the land. You farm the night with seeds of fear and thirst intensifying a longing for our burdened homeland; with half-sad eyes you say: despite exile, tyranny, deprivation, there is no other land to contain our love for a loss we still grieve.

❖❖❖❖❖❖❖

7.I return to scentcollect particles of innocence,I was fully present, in the moment,you were there...You wore the moon’s shadow,fearing my past ash,accumulated on my heart’s wall.I was breathing all the dustwe left in corners we usedto visitThen, built stories from mud bricks,and prayed rain won’t fall,I forgot I had left the desert;here, it rains to welcomethe fall.

one last. So brave, we have all but disappeared. We are on, for size. To be found inferior, in any dimension. This one is all the reasons you can’t read in the dark. It pours salt from fine linen like the fakest Christmas jangles your hair &. lusting for rain, when a life can’t be wanted, death can. It is something. It is increasingly, the texture of your curls. It is still, your gold hammers dizzyings pelt the insides of my skull in patches. The crashing salt polished to a thinness that melts the tongue.

Keep me & never let me go

It is something, not nothing. I’ve taken to statistics & so, keep being made to inventory your name. A parchment of lips & unspoken. I wanted to be relieved. Instead, the usual endless shame. It is midas-like & no longer comforting. Even the contortions that accompany, where otherwise shapeless. They are not nothing. I whisper to the stone sinking in the pit of every track to cross me, every thistley undergrowth, every lonely tie tripped down. & you are there, our silences full as ever.

The sin of despair

like children, playing in what seems to be instead of what is— it takes away the sin of the world. Like pieces of war in the silverware drawer & all your chickenhawks & goldilocks, perforations pour from you, lit up remnants of torn creatures that can’t regenerate what my grip erased, tried to fill it in with lipstick & dirty highlighter pens. I am only as filthy as you’ll let me. & the ground, collapsed my knees, wrings the flight from a cockeyed cumulus. Who could be this earthbound & hollow? You pick from me, I’m nothing but mites—

in a voice we’ve only begun to recognize.

& the grass dreams you

shocked creature, nearly hideless. The blades make a sparse fur, peel back on silver eyes dot the trees. Learn to move as other than. Pray, in terror & — splice wing to pelt to forked tongue. Splice gill to thistle, muck to heron. Mite to thorn, moss to chaff, wind to husk fast gone spark.

You reinvent me

until I am, like a man— a pornography of ghosts. You reinvent us all, in your new image.

Once, so stunningly flint-tipped, now see how little you could destroy.

Originally appeared in Yes Poetry. Reprinted with permission of the author.